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Paul Newman Has Died

Sad news. Great American actor Paul Newman has died. His major films include Exodus, Cool Hand Luke, and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. His period of greatest achievement in film was no doubt the fifteen years between 1958 and 1973, when he was Brick in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, and Henry Gondorff in The Sting. During this time he was arguably the greatest male star, and the most desired. He was beautiful and magnificent in The Hustler, and Hud. He had something of an Indian summer in the 1980s, with The Colour of Money, and the haunting The Verdict. Newman was a leaner, subtler, and perhaps more intelligent method actor, in the Brando style - and almost as big a sex symbol. His death leaves few actors of that era, and that fame and talent, alive - one thinks of, perhaps, Robert Redford, or Warren Beatty, as contemporaries, or near-equals - but neither quite had the acting chops, the gravitas, of Newman. He will be greatly missed, and is immortal on the screen.
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